Irony Irony They've All Got It Irony

Howay man - Mark , me missus does the irony !

talking about irony becoming discredited in the UK, as I believe Robin was neutrally observing... There's also a big anti-irony debate going on in the US, centred around a book by some home educated kid from the backwoods of Wisconsin who claims that irony is cultivating "a nastiness and insecurity that is present in every corner of our lives".

I think there's a great danger in completely rejecting irony, because to put it clumsily, you throw out the twin babies, humour and free expression along with the bathwater. True, Damon Albarn is an utterly smug, tiresome bastard, but I worry about the number of groups / commentators who are vocally anti-irony and concerned with "keeping it real", or constructing "a new classicism" .. what next, mein freunde, torchlit parades? Irony is like a swinging door, we need it to freshen our lives, and senses of humour, but we also need moments of "real feeling" (even if only predicated on a misrecognisation of "self", or a naive misrecognition of the ideology we're buying into). We shouldn't demonise either thing.

Rant over

momus: hmm. so does the carefully directed meaning of _closer_ come from ian curtis's lyrics, peter hook's basslines, a combination of it all, or what? since peter hook said he never listened to the lyrics at the time in any semantic way, was he appreciating his band with a level of irony, by ignoring/rejecting certain meanings that ian curtis may have tried to put across? do i like jd more ironically than cinderella if i tune out the suicidal lyrics of the one but get into the party spirit of the other? if i appreciate led zeppelin non-ironically, what does that mean? that i think about fairies and ringwraiths while listening? these may be dumb questions but this issue really does make me curious.

I was thinking more about irony being discredited through the association of a cheap, lazy form of it with tiresome nostalgia shows but yes, Pete, that's *exactly* how I feel.

I have the urge to reprise Doompatrol23's arguments on the 'Class and Race Debate - the enemy of Creativity'(sic), but that's only because I find irony amusing, like an involuntary spasm that connects my heart and my head, so I don't like it dissected. Irony and Pomo both share the prismatic intellectual qualities that make them interesting to apply, though an awareness of them does little to enrich our perspective. Still, they make good conversation.

I had something to say on one of Britain's greatest fallacies - "Americans lack a sense of irony" but as we all know it's just an unkind generalisation...intellectual superiority....etc... Right?

I reckon there is less of a culture of irony in the US mainstream. Stuff like God, Patriotism etc. still matters to some, straight down the line, honest to goodness seriously, my theory being that if you are the world's first country, you tend to take yourself pretty seriously (cf Victorian England)...

But in the margins of US culture and the avant garde, irony has the strength of paint stripper and could vaporise our knobbly limey knees in five seconds flat.

How related is irony to cynicism? Momus sees it as an enabler of freedom. Mork sees it as cynicism incarnate. America is probably more cynical than Britain. Now that was a staggeringly crude generalisation. Note my ironic disclaimer.

Reviving this based on Peter Andre and stevem's comments.

I think, before it all kicks off again, we should keep the wto meanings hinted at above as separate as possible.

1) Making art 'ironically' or with 'irony'.
2) Liking art 'ironically'

I'm sure we're agreed that irony in the first sense is pretty essential, so how's about we look at the second meaning?

For me, as I've said in an article on Freaky Trigger, I love it. It's a way of enjoying music and tends to get looked down upon - as in a few of the posts above - because it's not 'proper', it's not actually 'liking the music', it takes something away from the real, heartbreaking stuff you listen to.

But I think 'irony' opens up so much and you can like things ironically and 'properly' at the same time - in fact I'd argue it's impossible not to.

But more than this - and it's taken years to realise it - but I'm not ashamed of liking things 'ironically', in the pure, 'huh, funny, kitsch' way. I mean, why should I be?

Depends on the circumstance. Like what Patrick originally brought up. Some people do it for fear of coming off as stupid, and therefore, are afraid to enjoy things for what they are. It's dishonest smugness I'd rather not be exposed to, but that's just me.